


Things You Can Touch

by wolfbird



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, I promise there will be loving relationships, In this fic I will do what I want, It'll be the Capitol being shitty. No one good in District 12 is transphobic change my mind, M/M, Microaggressions, Mild Transphobia, Trans Gale, don't worry about that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfbird/pseuds/wolfbird
Summary: When Gale is reaped, Katniss begs his tribute partner, Peeta Mellark, to owe her one more favor: protect Gale at all costs. Unable to refuse Katniss, Peeta pretends to be in love with Gale to garner sympathy from the audience. Gale has to play along, but both of them make clear to each other that they're only doing this for Katniss. At least, that's what they say at first.
Relationships: Gale Hawthorne/Peeta Mellark, Katniss Everdeen/Gale Hawthorne/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	1. [Gale] I Waste Time Over Bread

I wake before the sun rises. The sky is slate gray outside my window, that pre-dawn light I know so well. I haven’t really slept in past dawn since my father died; there’s just so much to do, and sometimes, in that half-light, I can take a glorious moment to forget everything that’s happened since I was 14. Except Katniss. I never forget her.

I swing my socked feet over the side of the bed and set my weight gently on the wood floor, which always creaks if I’m not careful. I’m careful today, though, and Rory, Vick, and Posy stay asleep. We all share the main room with the fireplace, and my mother sleeps in the kitchen, which is also her washroom. This morning, her washtub stands empty, the kitchen counter blessedly clear of clients’ clothes. Sometimes she washes so many rounds of laundry in a day that her hands crack and she has to wrap them so they don’t bleed on someone’s clean sheets, but she won’t do that today. Today is Reaping day, and she can sleep all she wants until 2. 

If I had it my way, her hands would never bleed again, Reaping day or no Reaping day. If I had it my way, there would be no Reaping day at all. But there are so few things I have my way. The pre-dawn light is one of them. The structure of society is not.

I close the door to our tiny bathroom and click on the light. We have electricity today, again because it’s the Reaping. I think the Capitol wants us to like Reaping day, or they pretend they want us to like it, or something. I splash freezing water from the faucet onto my face to wake myself up the rest of the way, then lock eyes with myself in the mirror, running my hands over the faint stubble on my cheeks. It’s finally coming in, which makes me smile just a little. I look like my dad in his wedding pictures: the same strong chin, messy black hair, dark skin, grey eyes. He wore his hair long, like many of the men in the Seam. I used to until the baker’s eldest son called me a girl for it in the sixth grade. He wasn’t talking shit after I punched him in the teeth, but I’ve worn my hair short ever since. 

I gather my coat and boots, though I don’t put them on until I’m out on the front stoop, watching the sky turn from grey to pink. Rory wakes up sometimes if I fumble around putting clothes on in there, and I don’t want to have to put him back to bed. I want this morning to be mine for as long as it can be, and then mine and Katniss’s once I meet her in the woods. My hands itch to hold a bow or fishing rod, to scrape on rough rock and tree branches, but I have an errand to run first. 

Once I’ve stomped my feet back to warmth after putting them in my cold boots, I head for the back of the house and pull the squirrel off the hook by the back door. It can be risky business to leave kills in plain sight overnight, but Peacekeepers like to sleep in on Reaping day, too. Anyway, most in the Seam turn a blind eye. Funny how a desire for fresh meat can win out over the law. 

As the sun starts to peek over the hills to the east, I take a second to look, then I turn my back to it and head west into town. The Seam is quiet today, the mines empty. My breath wisps in front of me in the cool morning air, and alone on the street, I almost feel free. I pass Katniss’s house on the way into town, and I smile when I think about seeing her later today. I’ll let her sleep, though, and meet her in the woods later. One rule we have is that we don’t make social calls at each other’s houses. Besides, this errand is for her, and I want to see her face when I reveal the surprise. She always smiles wider in the woods.

As I continue down our dusty streets, crumbling three-room shacks give way to sturdier houses. A few are even two stories tall, which seems a waste to me. Two families could live there with room to spare; it’s perverse to have that much space when some of us have so little. These are some of the same people who smiled in my starving face when I was bringing them grouse at 15 and asked me if I could please lower the price a bit, as though we were friends. I content myself with spitting on the pavement. There’s a lot to be mad about all the time, and if I think about any one thing for too long, it takes me over.

The baker’s house is two stories, but this one I can almost forgive, because the downstairs is filled with the whole of their kitchen, which makes the chimneys smoke all day long no matter the season. I’m happy to find the chimneys smoking this morning. I’d been pretty sure the baker would be up, because he’s a sad man, and sad men rise early on Reaping day. I would know.

I adjust the squirrel hanging over my shoulder so I can lift my arm to use the doorknocker. I knock twice short and quick, and wait before knocking a final third time. This is our signal with the baker, Katniss and me, and we sometimes knock it to each other when we’re hungry as a little joke. Over the years, she and I have made up a lot of little jokes like that. It’s sort of become our own language.

I hear the telltale sounds of someone fumbling to put down a pan before rushing to the door, and I step back to make room for the door to swing outwards. I expect to see the baker with his sad smile and tired eyes, but instead, one of his sons is standing there. It’s the youngest one, in Katniss’s grade. I haven’t ever bothered to learn their names, and the eldest’s behavior in school didn’t make me feel particularly bad about that, but it’s awkward now. His face shows a mixture of confusion and disappointment when he recognizes me, but he wipes that away quickly. I get the feeling he had hoped I was a girlfriend of his, or something. 

“Is your father awake?” I ask. I don’t want to chitchat with this kid.

“Um, no,” the kid responds. His eyes are very blue, like his father’s, and they also look pretty tired. “You’re Gale, right? With the meat?”

So he knows my name. I definitely feel awkward now. 

“Yeah, that’s me. Look, if your dad’s not awake –“

“I can take the squirrel off your hands,” he says, pushing the front door open all the way. I can see now that he’s not really a kid anymore. He’s shorter than me but broad, well-built. Here’s someone who’s never known hunger. “What do you want for it?”

Well, he may be burly, but he’s a bad businessman. Never let the seller make the first offer. I pretend to think it over, then say, “Two fresh loaves of that herb bread.” Two loaves is one loaf too many for a squirrel. 

Clearly he knows this too, and he gives me a sharp, wry smile that’s at odds with the roundness of his face. “I’ll make you a deal. Two loaves burned or one loaf fresh. Your choice.”

I guess I misjudged him -- he’s not too bad a businessman. Two loaves burned would be a great trade for me if I was starving, and it would cost him nothing because he’d have to throw those loaves away anyway. But I’m not starving today. This is special.

I sigh grudgingly. “One loaf fresh for the squirrel.”

“Deal.” He nods seriously, but his eyes are still smiling. I just got put in my place for being an asshole, but he acts like we were both in on the joke all along. It’s hard not to smile back when he brings out a steaming, perfect herb loaf and hands it to me. I pass off the squirrel to him and thank him. 

“May the odds be in your favor today,” he says, and the smile falls off my face. The truth rears its ugly head in that silent moment: the odds aren’t in my favor today, but they are in his. He who has never been hungry, has never had to exchange his safety for grain to feed his family. Taking it out on him won’t solve anything, but I fire at him anyway: “Yeah, I need it. They’re already in yours.” I turn around just as his eyes widen. His mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but I’m already heading away at a brisk walk towards the forest. Fuck that kid. Katniss is waiting for me.


	2. [Gale] I Get What's Coming To Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Misgendering with serious consequences.

I beat Katniss to our meeting place, which isn’t that surprising. It’s only about an hour after sunrise now, and it’s the middle of summer, so sunrise comes early. Another of our rules: we always meet in the same spot, a rock outcropping overlooking a small valley. In winter, we can see all the way to the forest floor from up here, but in summer, it juts out over a sea of leafy green. We have to scramble through a blackberry patch to get to the ledge, but that makes it feel safe and hidden.

I would come here before I met Katniss, too, with my dad, whenever he wasn’t down in the mines. I would run out to the edge and spread my arms wide, shouting that I was the king of the forest. He’d chuckle and shake his head. “No one can rule the forest, Gale. Not the Capitol. Not the Districts. Not even you.” I’d pout and he’d pick me up by my armpits and swing me out over the emptiness below and I’d laugh and laugh and laugh, feeling wild.

I stopped coming here after he died, and didn’t start again until Katniss and I started hunting together. I was glad to have something special to share with her. I still like having special things to share with her, like the bread, warm in my hands. I scoot out to the very edge of the rocks and dangle my legs over, hoping she arrives soon. The bread will get cold otherwise, and I want it to be fresh for her.

Soon enough, I hear the brambles rustling, and Katniss fights her way out, a huge grin spreading across her face as our eyes meet. If I’m wild, Katniss is doubly so, blackberry leaves tangled in her long, dark hair, the early morning sun casting a beautiful yellow-orange glow on her brown skin. I feel like I’ve swallowed warm milk with honey and cinnamon, straight from the stove. Being with her warms me up, and even though it’s foolish, and a long shot, I can’t help but notice that she has a smile for me that she doesn’t give to anyone else.

“Hey Catnip,” I say, waving from the ledge. “Look what I shot!” I’m holding the bread on the other side of me, away from her view, and I reveal it now. I stuck an arrow in it earlier, and it sits straight in the top. “You know, for the special day and all.” She gives a tiny eyeroll and a sideways smile that makes my heart flip. I pluck a blackberry and put on my worst Capitol accent as I toss it to her, announcing, “May the odds –“

She leans forward, catching the blackberry in her mouth. “ – be ever in your favor!” she finishes, laughing. The juice is red against her lips as she laughs and I’m caught up in the sensuality of it. I think I love her. I’m doomed.

We split the bread, and Katniss reveals her own surprise: cheese from Prim’s goat, Lady. The herbs in the bread compliment the cheese perfectly, and it’s all I can do to eat slowly. This is the best breakfast I’ve had in weeks. Katniss is similarly entranced. For a second, my mind wanders back to the baker’s boy this morning. Privilege aside, I have to admit that he makes a great herb loaf.

We take our time there, enjoying our bread and cheese, looking out over a world that doesn’t belong to us or anyone. The sun rises higher over the hills in the distance, warming the air quickly. I catch glimpses of a herd of deer picking their way through the trees and brush in the valley below. They’re healthy and young -- we’d never catch them, and today, I don’t want to try. Katniss picks berries off of the bushes and makes sure to hand me some every time she finds enough, and both our fingertips stain purple-red. We don’t say a word to each other. We can sit, stand, swim, or hunt for hours in silence.

Suddenly, as a warm breeze stirs up to mark the definitive end of early morning, I am struck with the gut-clenching feeling that we’re running out of time. Greasy Sae would say that someone stepped on my grave. The Reaping looms large, the thought of that glass bowl filled with my name once, twice, a hundred times. My chest tightens, and the words are out before I can stop them.

“We could do it, you know.”

Katniss looks at me like a startled animal. “What?” She knows what.

“Leave the District. Run off. Live in the woods.” I look at our stained hands, close to touching. “You and I, we could make it.”

Her hand jolts away from mine, as if shocked. She’s still looking at me, her eyes huge. I see something like betrayal in them.

“I mean, If we didn’t have so many kids,” I joke, to break the tension. Of course, she would never leave Prim. And I…well, I couldn’t leave Rory or Posy or Vick. My mom’s strong, but she doesn’t make enough to feed them. Taking them with us would be out of the question, too.

She looks away from me. “I never want to have kids,” she says bitterly. My gut twists. She may never want to, but the thought that I never can keeps me up at night.

“I might. If I…if I could,” I admit. It’s hard for me to talk about this with her. She knows about me, everyone does, and it doesn’t seem to stop her from taking me as I am, but I don’t like bringing it up. I’m afraid of her looking at me and seeing someone I’m not.

“But you can’t,” she says flatly. It hurts to hear her say it, even though I don’t think she means anything by it. I clench my jaw, and now I’m the one to move away.

“Forget it.” I think I read everything all wrong. The fear of what might happen today, how I might lose her or she might lose me, has clearly made me stupid. I fix my eyes on the horizon, still painfully aware of her, how she sits deliberately not touching me. I don’t want this to be how we leave it before we go to the Reaping, and besides, we have hours left to spend together. But I don’t know how to fix this, whatever it is.

Fortunately, Katniss does. I feel her soften and move a little closer to me, and despite myself, I turn to look.

“What do you want to do?” she says, so matter-of-factly that I’m confused at first by what she means. Then I realize this is her way of making up, changing the subject. Getting us working together again as a team.

I pause for a second, then say decisively, “Let’s fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight.” If she’s going to pretend that this is all ok, then so am I. We scramble through the blackberries again, and I wince as a particularly nasty thorn catches my cheek. The day’s shaping up to be hot; we might as well swim while we’re at it. In a way, finding our own happiness out here today is as much a middle finger to the Capitol as any we can give.

The morning passes too quickly. After fishing, when we no longer have to worry about scaring off our catch, we jump in the lake together, and I avert my eyes as she emerges in her underclothes, soaking wet. The strawberries and blackberries surrounding the lake are abundant and ripe to bursting, so we gather some, and we both eat a few thimbleberries, which are too fragile to harvest.

As we emerge from the woods, I realize the wet clothes were a mistake; they become heavy and sticky in the summer heat. We will have a chance to change before the Reaping though, and the worst that happens is that Greasy Sae and a couple Hob regulars get a laugh in at us as we trade our fish.

We stop by the Mayor’s house to sell our strawberries, which his daughter, Madge, loves. When she comes to the door, she purses her lips at our dampness but doesn’t mention it. Despite that, I can’t help hating her and her fancy dress, all ready for the big day. Anxiety about the Reaping hangs over her like a cloud, and my anger boils over. She, like the baker’s son, is safe. Something in my gut tells me that’s a crime she can’t be forgiven for, even though my head and heart know that it’s not her fault. Katniss practically has to drag me away before I can say something I’ll regret.

We part ways in the square after dividing our haul. I try to sneakily persuade her to take a little more than her share, but she notices and divides everything up evenly again. As she walks away, I find myself wishing that I hadn’t said anything in the woods. I find myself wishing I had waited until the moment before she turned away in the square, that I had brushed her hair out of her face and said something then. _“You’re so beautiful,”_ I could have said, and seen where that went. Instead, I head home too, and my mother fusses over the lake water in my hair as I change into a button down shirt and the only pair of slacks that still fit me after I grew three inches when I was sixteen.

At long last, it’s time. My mom calls for Rory and Vick, who have been punching each other in the arms with reckless abandon, and she gathers Posy up in her arms from the crib. For a second, I envy all of them their ignorance, all just a little too young to understand. In a year, Rory will. Vick and Posy will too not much longer after that.

“You look so handsome,” my mother tells me as we leave the house. “Hardly a boy anymore.” She tells me this to make me feel better, and it does. If I make it past this Reaping, I will graduate from a boy to a man next year, and I’ll be free of this fear. Or I would be, if there wasn’t Katniss to think of, and my siblings later. There will be no children to worry about down the line, though, and I have to grudgingly admit that Katniss might have a point. The fewer people you have, the freer you are. The lonelier, too.

I rub my hand absently over my chin where my stubble is coming in. I notice how the men nod their heads at me as I pass, their clothes stained with coal dust. That’ll be me as soon as I turn eighteen, and they recognize me as their own. The thought of the mines should hang more fear over me than the Reaping, statistically speaking, but all I feel is pride that they look at me that way. I have Katniss’s mother to thank for that: certain medicines and herbs, taken early, can change the way that puberty goes, and I knew long before then who I was and what I wanted.

I hear the square before I see it: hot from the sun and full of nervous people, it buzzes with strained chatter and the sound of feet on cobblestone. The boys and girls of Reaping age are each penned in to the square’s cordoned-off edges, and an empty aisle stretches down the middle. A wall of Peacekeepers separates the crowd from the back of the aisle, and a podium and stage stand at the front. Before I submit to be marched into the boys’ pen, my mother puts her hand on my cheek, and I put up my own hand to hold hers there.

A Peacekeeper takes my arm and I wrench it out of his grasp. “I’m fucking going,” I snarl, and he holds up both his hands to let me pass. If I’m walking to my death, you’d better believe I’m walking on my own two feet. I see Katniss across the square, holding Prim’s hand. “Katniss!” I call, and her eyes meet mine with a smile before she’s motioned firmly into the girls’ pen. I hold her smile in my head like it’s a little bird.

I duck under the cordon and enter the boys’ pen. Henry Little, another boy my age from the Seam, bumps my fist and grins maniacally. He smells like white liquor. “Want a taste?” he asks, opening his threadbare suit jacket to show me a flask nestled in his inside pocket. Everyone deals with shit differently.

“I would if you hadn’t already thrown up on it,” I retort. “Clean that shit off, would you?” He laughs so loudly that some of the other boys shoot him death glares.

“How about you?” he asks the boy behind him.

“I’m good, thank you,” a familiar voice replies. I look over Henry’s shoulder to see the baker’s son from this morning, his blue eyes regarding Henry with pity. Typical of his kind, to think they’re above it all. However, I can’t help but notice a bruise poking up over his shirt collar, stark purple against his pale skin. Fresh. I’d heard rumors that his mother beat him, but to do it on a Reaping day?

He catches me staring and our eyes meet. His cheeks go pink with shame and he pulls his shirt collar up higher, covering the bruise. I turn away too, somehow ashamed for having looked.

Thankfully, Effie Trinket takes the stage, and I can hate her without having to feel bad about it. She’s got hair a garish shade of pink this time, and her skin is covered in so much powder that she looks like a sheet ghost. I wonder how old she is, which is impossible to tell. Maybe she’ll die up there in the heat because she’s secretly like 100 years old, and then the Reaping won’t happen. I realize I’m afraid and immediately wish I could forget I’d realized that.

She announces our mayor, who looks like he’d rather be anywhere but on stage. He reads his canned lines and steps back down, but not before Haymitch Abernathy, the only remaining District 12 victor of a whopping two in history, makes an ass of himself by falling off the stage. “That could be you,” I whisper to Henry Little, who by now looks like he might actually throw up. I don’t blame him. His name must be up there almost as many times as mine.

Effie Trinket is not impressed, and her welcome speech to 12 is as sardonic as I’ve ever heard her. In fact, it’s bordering on my overblown, sarcastic mimickry of a Capitol accent from earlier this morning. I feel Katniss’s smirk on me through the crowd and I turn to meet her eyes again. Despite my grin, my heart’s pounding, as I’m sure hers is. She’s gripping Prim’s hand so tight it’s almost turning blue. The smile drops off my face. I want her here with me. I want us to be able to protect each other from everything, like we’ve learned to do. _Catnip_ , I mouth, but she’s already turned away, because Effie Trinket is about to draw the names.

“Ladies first!” she says, as she always does, and she reaches her hand into the glass ball with the girls’ names on it. There is no chatter anymore. My own heart has stopped. Katniss’s name is in there. If she’s drawn, I’ll rush the stage, I’ll shatter the glass ball in Effie's face, I would die to stop Katniss from going –

Effie clears her throat dramatically and then reads out the name.

She does not say _Katniss Everdeen_. She doesn’t even say _Primrose Everdeen_ , a second fear of mine. What she says doesn’t make sense. What she says is met with puzzled silence, looks of confusion, and a dawning, consuming sense of horror and shame high in my throat.

What she says is, impossibly, my name.

She says, loud and clear: _Gale Hawthorne._

I am not a girl. My name shouldn’t have been in that bowl. Everyone knows my name should not have been in that bowl. They can see it to look at me.

But all the Capitol knows is my birth certificate.

_This year’s female tribute from District 12. Gale Hawthorne._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'll be updating more regularly now that I've gotten past the part of the story that follows the books. No longer will you catch me rewriting scenes from canon more or less word for word.


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